


Chaos

by Sarah1281



Category: Into the Woods - Sondheim/Lapine
Genre: Character Study, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 05:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4734176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah1281/pseuds/Sarah1281
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Narrator has long-since been used to knowing exactly how the story will go but the Witch throwing him to the giantess took him by surprise. He can still see the beautiful story meant to unfold but as he falls he knows that it will be lost forever and chaos will reign instead. Oh, what a waste.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chaos

People never really understood about narrators.

Oh, they got the basic concept already. Someone who was not born, someone who does not age, someone who does not need to eat or sleep or anything else that people do. Someone who knows the plot and tells the story.

No, the misunderstanding was a bit subtler than that and concerned the nature of the narrator. People always thought that because the narrator knew what was going to happen he had to control what was going to happen or at least the story was already set in place and nothing they could do could possibly change it.

That wasn't true at all. Just because the narrator might say that the girl and the boy kissed didn't mean they had to. They could just stare blankly at each other or leave or even kill each other and there was nothing the narrator could do about it. It would make him seem rather foolish, at least to anyone hearing the story being told.

It didn't happen that way, though. Not ever. Or at least the narrator had never heard of it. Perhaps it had been covered up. For what was the point of a narrator telling a tale that wasn't going to happen? Sometimes the narrator wondered if it was truly possible for the story to derail like that if it had never been proven.

He had never wanted to find out.

Well…that wasn't quite true. Some of the tragedies he had had to tell broke his heart. The more kind and honorable the characters were and the closer they got to their happy ending the greater the tragedy. Sometimes, when it seemed like their happily ever after was well-within reach and they were at the precipice of making that fatal mistake that sealed their fates and doomed them he wished – just for a moment – that they wouldn't listen to him. That they would just leave or not trust the suspicious character or burn the letter immediately.

They never did.

He thought he'd be okay if that was how the story spiraled out of control. At least it would have a purpose and some good would come out of it.

Well…possibly. If a story was derailed then maybe the intended tragedy wouldn't happen but that was no guarantee that some other one wouldn't take place instead. And he'd be powerless to prevent it even if this new tragedy was worse than the old because he'd know no more than anyone else in the story.

This was nothing like that.

This was supposed to be nice and easy.

It was a fairy tale. Actually, it was a lot of fairy tales all combined in one marvelously fun story.

The boy got his cow and his gold and chopped down the beanstalk. The girl became a princess and escaped her abusive family forever. The boy and his wife had their child after all and could have ten children if they so chose, finally free of the curse his father had left behind. The girl was delivered from the belly of the wolf along with her grandmother and learned a valuable if painful lesson about blind trust.

All was as it should be. Even the villains were doing alright. The stepsisters may have had their eyes pecked out by birds but they were living in a castle with someone whose tears had been proven to restore eyesight and they were the stepsisters of the princess. The witch might have lost her powers but that was really for the best for everyone and she was young and beautiful again.

Everything was as it should be.

Oh, but they were only halfway through the tale! They had their precious moments of happiness and of peace but then came Act II and they had to overcome a few more challenges and make sure that they truly had learned the lessons they were meant to.

He saw the story laid out before him as it was supposed to happen even now.

The story did not take into account the fact that the situation was changing and diverging from the intended path.

He had arrived to find the group cowering before the widowed giantess who was demanding satisfaction in the form of blood for her husband's death a year ago. It was always a little awkward starting a new story but he had told these people's tale for awhile already and knew how it would go. He would drop by and let them know where to go and what to do and the plot would develop exactly as it was supposed to.

Here the giantess would demand Jack but Jack wasn't there. She would be nearsighted and not believe them and they would come up with the desperate idea to give her someone in Jack's place in hopes that she would not notice the difference and keep her word and leave without killing anyone else. Oh, she hadn't tried to kill anybody as of yet but she was so big and everything was so small that it was really hard to avoid. It would have been difficult for her not to have killed anybody when her every step could flatten a house even without her vision problems.

They were supposed to ultimately decide that they could not risk it and that it wasn't fair to just kill off one of them. They were normal everyday people (yes, even those that lived in a castle) and they were not used to these kinds of decisions. They were supposed to promise to deliver Jack but then try to find another way.

He was narrating just that in fact when the most peculiar and terrible thing he had ever witnessed came to past.

Everyone could always hear him when he spoke but usually he was just ignored since there was really no use arguing with or commenting on the plot. The narrator was just an everyday part of the lives of anybody who ever did anything interesting and they had all just gotten used to it.

But then they stopped and turned to him and there was something frightening about their faces.

They proposed to give him to the witch. It would solve all of their problems quite handily. They all – mostly – wouldn't feel right giving one of them over to the giant to be murdered. These weren't bad people. Well, not all of them were bad people and even the steward and Cinderella's relatives weren't murderers.

But him? He was an outsider, as he had pointed out. They quipped that now he would be inside the plot when he was dying for them. Panicked, he tried to point out that it would be a terrible idea to kill him and deprive them of knowledge of the plot (if the plot could even proceed the same way with them offering him up instead of taking the higher road). Surprisingly, they seemed to listen. Or perhaps it wasn't so surprising after all. What they were proposing just wasn't right. It went against nature!

Just when he had begun to breathe a sigh of relief, the Witch – frustrated by the lack of action and practical problem solving – overruled them and simply tossed him up to the giant regardless of what everyone else had decided. Of course it would be a witch whose idea of good parenting was locking her stolen daughter in a tower with no doors her whole life and denying her any sort of contact until the daughter tried to leave and then banishing her into the desert and blinding her prince. Of course it would be a witch who thought a few pilfered herbs justified stealing a baby and that the taking of the herbs signified an agreement to that bargain. Of course it would be a witch who didn't care when the baby's mother died, her father cried, and her brother was left alone with vague ideas of a baking accident.

Could narrators even be killed?

He had never heard of such a thing.

He was about to find out. Somehow, he feared the answer would be yes.

The giantess picked him up roughly and held him up to her face so she could see him properly. The narrator held his breath and hoped that the fact he really looked nothing like Jack would be his salvation.

Sure enough, the giantess began to rage about how he was not the boy he was looking for. He had just started to relax again when he was unceremoniously thrown from the top of the beanstalk. He was vaguely aware that he was yelling as he fell.

The beanstalk was so tall that there was a lot of time to think on the way down. There was a lot of time to see how it was all supposed to go and mourn the fact that the Witch had just doomed them all.

Oh, it would have been wonderful!

Little Red Riding Hood's mother had been stomped by the giant but she would have made it safely to her grandmother's house and moved in and it would have been good for the both of them. Her grandmother was strong and fearless and would have taught Red Riding Hood much about how to protect herself.

Jack would have eventually faced the giantess and had a long talk with her about his actions and hers and the giantess would have agreed to take back the stolen goods and tearfully leave, promising that if she ever saw Jack again she would kill him. Jack's mother wouldn't be pleased at the loss of wealth but there would have still been enough golden eggs to keep them more than comfortable going forward and Jack would remember what really mattered and be less naïve going forward.

The Baker and his wife would be given a few golden eggs to make up for the fact that their house was flattened by the giantess and when they rebuilt it they had plenty more room. The Baker would get over his fear of holding his son and his wife would get a break from always having to provide the childcare. They would go on to have five more children. The Baker would eventually learn to forgive his father for everything.

Rapunzel would need a lot of love and support and while her prince would initially be distracted by a sleeping beauty, he would come to see making Rapunzel happy as a challenge when she declared that she could never be happy. If there was one thing this prince could not stand it was losing and he always wanted what was out of reach so he would make a happy, normal (if royal) life his goal of a lifetime. Their children would never know Rapunzel's pain but the difficulties their parents' sometimes faced because of it would ensure they were better people than their father.

Cinderella's prince would come across her in the woods and, not recognizing her, try to have a fling with her. Once he saw it was her, he would remember just how alluring he found her in the first place and he would be alarmed at her return to rags and fear he was losing her. He may have been bored with the marriage as well but the thought that he might lose her would make her suddenly that much more attractive to him. Every time it looked like they were growing apart, that fear would reoccur and she never would stay out of his heart for long. She would often long for more freedom and go on journeys but every time she faced such a warm welcome home that she would not be able to bear staying away forever and once she would have children it began to feel like much more of a home than it ever had before. With a mother like Cinderella, so well-versed in being kind in the midst of suffering, the young princes and princesses would develop her character and his charms.

The Witch would get used to having severely diminished powers one day realize that she preferred being eternally young and beautiful to being able to curse people and she had other ways of getting what she wanted. She was clever and, though she never would became good or nice, always seemed to end up being proven right. She would even manage to come to terms with Rapunzel and come to love her grandchildren, even if she was never allowed unsupervised with them lest she run off with them.

Cinderella's stepsisters would eventually come to understand how kind Cinderella was and how little they deserved it after what they did and, somehow or other, Rapunzel's tears would end up in their eye sockets restoring their sight. Her stepmother would never change but at least she would be content and harmless aside from being a little haughty to the servants. The steward would be sat down by Cinderella, with the full authority of her husband, and informed he needed to change how he acted towards those of a lower station and he would reluctantly comply. Cinderella's father never would acknowledge that he was horribly neglectful to Cinderella for all those years but, with the wine suddenly being hers, he would rediscover his affection for her and it would be better than nothing.

The Baker would meet his sister at last and tell her their story. They would visit each other and help each other heal. They would finally be a real family and not just broken pieces of one.

All would be well. It would be another happily ever after, even better than the first one!

He could see it still. It was so beautiful that it brought tears to his eyes that were flung away from his face as he fell.

Just because they were deviating from the plot didn't mean that it had to all go wrong but how could anything possibly compare with this?

The narrator would have liked to have been able to say that he bore them no ill will and wished them nothing but the best as he looked at their faces filled with horrified fascination but perhaps he was a little bit human after all.


End file.
